Tasting Death
by mmmspike
Summary: CHAP 7 UP!. Buffy dies under mysterious circumstances, but comes back ... as a ghost! It is up to her and the Scooby Gang (oh, and Spike, too!) to solve this mystery. But how will Buffy communicate with her friends when no one can see or hear her?
1. Chapter One

Title: Tasting Death  
  
Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me, unfortunately. So don't sue me; I'm basically worthless.  
  
Rating: Strong PG-13, or maybe a mild R.  
  
Author's Note: This is my first non 'character relationship driven' story. By that, I mean this story is actually going to have a real!plot. It takes place in season 5, but there's no Riley or Dawn (and therefore, no Glory), because I hate them. Read on and feel free to leave lots o' feedback on what you think of the first chapters of this ongoing work in progress. New chapters will be posted once a week (though some of the chapters will be short, like this first one - think Stephen King style in 'Misery'), so make sure to log on for   
Saturday updates. Remember, feedback keeps the author happy, so make sure to give, and you shall recieve.   
  
So here's the lowdown: our slayer of the hour, a one Miss Buffy Summers, dies. Tragically, unfortunately, and no one - not even Buff herself - knows how it happened. Buffy, even more surprisingly (or maybe not, in the JossVerse), doesn't stay dead. Yep, she comes back to life in true Casper form, leaving behind a bloody corpse and more than a few unanswered questions. So how will she communicate to her friends when they can't even see her? Why has she become a restless spirit? And how, exactly, did she come to meet her grisly fate?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
  
Chapter One   
  
It wasn't as if Buffy Summers would ever have called her life normal, or any semblance of thus.  
  
She had long conceded that, being a vampire slayer as she was, a fair amount of insanity was to be expected in her daily life. The Slayer namesake - along with increased strength, agility, and a number of other superhero-like abilities - bestowed upon its holder an endless amount of trouble. Angst was the doorprize and a violent death, most likely, would be the parting gift for any girl unlucky enough to be called Chosen, which she was. And unfortunately for Buffy, the title was a mandatory privilege - but one that she usually found somewhat enjoyable, despite her better instincts.

She had decided that one reason for this was that she had never liked losing, even in friendly competitions. It made her feel stupid and weak, properties that no slayer who survived for any amount of time could possess. As the Chosen One, she was strong, shrewd, and quick on her feet.   
  
So most that knew her well came to understand how she despised losing, refused to settle for runner up, and faced the rictus grin of the Grim Reaper on an almost daily basis. Mortality was just another issue Buffy had to deal with as Slayer, but one she found at times to be almost unreal. It surrounded her, enveloped her in its damp, smothering cloak; in turn, she embodied it.   
  
Did she fear death? How could she?!   
  
She -was- death, she brought it on a daily basis to a countless number of vampires, ghouls, and evil beasties with names she couldn't pronounce. Because she saw it every day, smelled it, reaped it, at even her most vulnerable hour Buffy subconsciously believed in her own immortality.   
  
As Slayer, as Chosen, she couldn't die.   
  
Therefore, it was almost dumbfounding to her when she did.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two  
  
It was around one in the morning when Buffy woke up in a puddle of congealing blood and thought: 'Shit'.  
  
Blinking, she glanced left and right, drawing a liquid breath that was surprisingly painless. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air, inhaling the familiar copper tang of open injuries and the earthy scent of freshly tilled soil. Her first instinct was to defend herself; her second was to come to the attack. But instead of leaping to her feet or throwing punches, she lay prone, confusion spinning her thoughts.   
  
Buffy felt bizarre, off. She raised a hand and made a small waving motion, watching mesmerised as the air around her changed. Like dropping stones in a lake, it rippled from the disturbance, dips and peaks forming and flattening in the wind. More than that, it felt electric. Everything buzzed, hummed, fizzed; the sky popped like a fireplace ember, and moreso when she moved.  
  
She could've lay like that for hours, watching with wonder as she transformed the atmosphere around her, if not for the worried cry that drew her from her stupor.  
  
"Buffy!"  
  
Xander was calling out to her, October leaves crunching underfoot as he wandered the cemetery grounds. Unthinking, she rose, pushing herself to her knees and standing slowly. Wobbling to her feet, a shudder crept through her body and suddenly, confusingly, she hurt. Her skin was on fire, burning and itching, and Buffy rubbed at her arms furiously to quiet the sensation. The crackling of fall leaves grew louder as Xander approached.  
  
"Hey, Buffy, where are you hiding?"  
  
He weaved through the tombstones, pushing through the bushes that surrounded the grassy clearing where she stood. Buffy smiled at him wearily as he walked towards her, still pressing her palms against her flesh to soothe the firey bites that made her quiver where she stood. She cleared her throat, feigned nonchalence for her friend's benefit, hoped that under the pale yellow light of the full moon that he wouldn't notice the blood that matted her hair.   
  
Xander's head swiveled left and right worriedly and, surprisingly, ignoring Buffy, his gaze settled behind her. Eyes widening, the natural, healthy California glow that he sported paled to a sickly shade as the blood drained from his face.   
  
"Oh, God . . ."  
  
Features crumpling to disgust and horror, he turned and abruptly vomited into the rusting foliage that littered the terrain.   
  
Buffy, however, didn't notice this. She didn't notice that her skin had stopped burning, or that she couldn't feel the wind that gusted through the clear night; how she couldn't feel anything at all.  
  
Instead, all she saw was the figure laying sprawled a few feet from her, limbs twisted at inhuman angles. All she saw was herself, eyes wide and unblinking, as she bled into the soft grass of the cemetery floor.   
  
Buffy shivered once, drew a quick breath, and abruptly passed out. 


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

It had been two days since her body had been discovered by Xander, and herself.   
  
Two days as a restless spirit, a wandering specter, an incorporeal haunt - or as Buffy liked to think of it, one really pissed off ghost - and a real death no longer seemed frightening to the girl.   
  
Two days, and she had just watched herself be buried.   
  
Six feet took very long to fill.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

It wasn't as if Buffy had wanted to go.   
  
In her opinion, the entire scene stunk of 'A Christmas Carol'. But where Dickens had allowed Ebeneezer Scrooge to sing and dance and breathe and buy a Christmas turkey after the whole ordeal was over and done with, Ebeneezer Buffy was stuck standing over her own grave without the happy insight that she was viewing the future. The changeable future, nonetheless. That Scrooge bastard had it easy.  
  
Instead, morbid as it was, she had wandered to a secluded nook of the Sunnydale cemetery where her funeral was being held and stood over her empty grave. She noted the blank face of the solid oak cross that stood as the marker, clearly the craftsmanship of a one Xander Harris.  
  
She sighed and lowered herself beside the grave, wishing that she was corporeal enough to lean against a headstone. She hadn't slept since her . . . crossing; she couldn't for all she knew. Buffy was dead, but she still found the very act of existing to be almost as exhausting as she did when she still had a pulse.  
  
By the time that the funeral service, having run a scant fourty minutes, had concluded, Buffy sheepishly admitted to herself that it was boring. She supposed that she should have cried, or moaned, or rattled some chains in a ghost-like manner and wept for what she had to give up. But frankly, what she was left feeling was a sense of boredom more than anything else. Oh, the speeches her friends gave were nice enough; they were what she would have said, had she been in their shoes. Best friend, blah, blah, blah, loved her so much, blah, blah, blah, so courageous, blah. Like an overly-long speech at the Academy Awards, Buffy knew everything they were going to say before they said it, who they were going to thank; she just wished she had the music to cut them off. Not that she wasn't grateful.  
  
The one speech that gave the funeral some spark had been Anya's tragically short and outrageously inappropriate speech. Life, in Anya's words, was just like sex.  
  
"When you're starting out, it can be strange or painful or vaguely unpleasant," she had said. "But after a short while, it feels nice. And then, just when you're starting to have a very good time, it ends. Before you get to have your orgasm."  
  
Then, quickly: "But not with Xander. We have good orgasms."  
  
And as swiftly as it had begun, it had ended, and Giles had Willow hold his glasses for him as he began to shovel the soil on top of her coffin.   
  
_Thunk. Thunk._  
  
Buffy had peered over the edge of the hole to get one last look at her casket, only to find that it had been buried beneath a fine layer of earth.  
  
_Thunk._  
  
The wind in the cemetery picked up, and the candles that had illuminated her gravesite flickered.

Flickered, then went out.

Buffy sighed, shivering despite herself.

Being dead sucked.


	5. Chapter Five

Author's Note: Sorry for the lateness of the chapter; been working the late shift. Will post another, longer chapter in the next day or so -- things'll pick up soon. Expect real!plot any day now!  
  
- - - - - - - - - - -  
  
Chapter Five

It was rounding eight o' clock in the morning when the bell over the Magic Box door tinkled for the second time.   
  
For the second time, too, Willow ignored it. Why bother?   
  
Instead, she lay her head on her hands and stared at the clock that was ticking away above the cash register. It was three minutes until the store opened for business, which meant she still had a few moments of peace and quiet before everyone showed up for the daily Scooby meeting. This, at least recently, equated to another hour or so of stilted conversation that nobody enjoyed, herself especially.   
  
Since Buffy had been . . . found, everyone close to Willow seemed to have a cloud of depression enshrouding them. While she certainly didn't expect life to be completely Candy Land, constant doom and gloom, in her experience, would do nothing to help their already helpless situation. Besides, gloom never did much to rally the troops. And now, in the most dire times they had ever faced, doom was near enough to taste.   
  
Buffy had been the Chosen, the One. The only one that hadn't gone homicidal or dead, at least, and now that she was gone, what hope was there for the rest of the world?   
  
Four years, six months, eleven days; this was how long she had known Buffy Summers. It had taken only a two second phone call from Xander to learn that she was dead.   
  
She had seen far too many disturbing things in the past three days, but this was what disturbed Willow the most.   
  
She sighed, resting her chin on her palms, and wished that she could find a spell to reverse time. Well, one that wouldn't cause the universe to implode in the process, anyway. And though she had scoured every book of magicks she could find - both the light and the dark variety - Willow had come up with bupcus; universe imploding, rain of toads bringing bupcus.  
  
Which was for the time being, unfortunately, the best option she had in the spell department.  
  
She lifted her head slightly at the sound of the bell ringing for the third time. A lead stone settled in her gut at the shuffling of approaching feet, the hushed murmurs of Xander and Anya's conversation as they made their way to her.   
  
Willow sighed and weighed her options; apocalypse-bringing time spell or the conversational variety hour from hell.   
  
A dull weight rested in the crook of her back as Xander rubbed a small, awkward circle there. The solemn voice greeted her with a tentative concern, as it had the last three days; "You okay?"  
  
Oh, yeah. Bring on the toads.


	6. Chapter Six

A/N: Took a while to get this one to where I felt okay about it - it was originally longer, but I had to cut it in two for time's sake. Hope you like, I'll be updating Saturday or, at latest, Sunday night (barring death or amputation). Thanks!

Chapter Six

Throughout history, different religions have each crafted their own concept of hell. However, despite conflicting beliefs, there is one aspect of hell that most religions agree upon: it really, really sucks - and for all eternity, to boot.  
  
Willow no longer feared hell. She was living it.   
  
Her hell, Sunnydale hell, took place in the form of a Scooby meeting that just. wouldn't. end. Though they had little to talk about, as the still raw issue of Buffy's untimely and ultimately confusing death was being skirted - at least when they were in person, the meetings grew longer and longer with each passing session. At current count, the latest gathering had gone on an unseemly hour and forty-three minutes. The last four of those had focused on how Giles had misplaced his glasses that morning; when he'd gone to clean them, he discovered they weren't on the dresser where he thought he'd left them.   
  
It was turning out to be, unfortunately, one of the highlights of the afternoon.  
  
As Giles talked, Willow idly wondered what she had done to piss off the Powers that Be so much so that they felt the need to take such drastic and spiteful action against her. She thought she had been a generally good girl; she flossed every day, washed behind her ears, and tried to give to charity at least once a year (she usually forgot). Not to mention being a sidekick to the Slayer herself! Well, at least until recently.   
  
But it wasn't as if everyone hadn't been trying to keep up the slack; since the funeral, Willow had begun patrolling nightly. She had discovered by the second day that, while the cemetery is a nice place to visit, she certainly wouldn't want to live there. A little day trip here and there is fine, but the nightlife sucks to the Pauly Shore-th degree.   
  
Her excursions to the Valley of the Shadow of Aches and Pains left her sorely needing some R&R, but it seemed that after years of neglect, both R's had abandoned her for good. Fortunately for Willow, though, Tara was more than willing to fill in the blank in her alphabet with some sorely needed TLC.   
  
In fact, she was the one that had convinced Willow to go the meeting despite her dread at the now painful dull-a-thons. And despite her own awkwardness at the overlying air of grief that she herself couldn't fully recognize, having only known Buffy for a short period of time, Tara continued to accompany Willow as her moral support.   
  
But Willow could see that Tara, too, was bored. Having given up any pretense of interest, she leaned against her girlfriend, her head slumping over her frame as her eyes drifted shut. A quick glance around the table revealed similar boredom. The day was depressing, the shop dull - a lone customer wandered among the knicknacks, not making a peep.   
  
Sleep was on everyone's mind, and Giles' story certainly wasn't helping - he was the speaking equivalent of triptophan. Anya especially looked bored. She began absently flicking a pencil against the table, an angry thwap! sounding dully with each hit. Giles paused at the sudden interruption, but she failed to notice. Her eyelids hung at half-mast as she stared off into space with a glazed over stare, chin resting heavily in one cupped palm.   
  
"Well, this is certainly interesting," Anya drawled theatrically to the group seated around her. "Not boring at all," she continued. "I personally enjoy spending hours at a time making small talk."  
  
Giles pressed his fingers against his temple, closing his eyes in obvious frustration. Willow felt a pang of sympathy for him; at least he was trying to make conversation, however dull it may be.   
  
"Anya, if you're bored, feel free to leave." He sighed under his breath. "Actually, I think everyone would find it rather . . . refreshing, at this point."  
  
She flicked her eyes over to Xander and, heaving a dramatic sigh, shook her head. She smiled brightly, displaying a falsely happy grin that reminded Willow of hyena Xander a few years back; the one that said he was fantasizing about your slow and painful evisceration.   
  
"No," she continued. "I find issues of no relevance to me to be fascinating." She turned to Giles. "Please, go on. I really do want to find out how the case of the missing glasses turns out."   
  
Xander gave Giles an embarrassed half-smile and turned to his girlfriend. "Ahn," he started, "lay off, will you? The conversation was ERing, and G-man's just trying to do the host thing. Which probably hasn't been very easy, considering we all have the collective energy of a sea sponge today." He paused. "And, uh, I don't mean the cartoon talking one, because that's just not right."  
  
Anya glared at him, her eyes flashing angrily. "I don't want to 'lay off', Xander. I wouldn't even be here unless _you_ hadn't forced me to go, and I wouldn't have to be a sponge, or pretend for over an hour like I'm having fun! It's not fun!"   
  
She motioned towards Giles. "His stories are awful, like some sort of . . . taffy made out of boring words. He just keeps talking about his 'missing' glasses, which I don't understand, because he's wearing them right now, so it's not like the whole thing's going to have a surprise ending. Besides, he's old and feeble and they were probably on his head the whole time."  
  
Xander reached for her, but she pulled away. "Anya, come on, you have to give Giles a little credit."  
  
Giles looked at Xander sheepishly. "Actually, no. She's, uh, she's quite right."  
  
Anya threw her hands up. "Ha! See? Like Nancy Drew, without the intrigue or mystery or annoying blond girl."  
  
"Anya," Xander soothed, "Look, I'm not going to force you to stay. You can go if you -"  
  
"Really?! Thank you!"   
  
She stood quickly, slinging her purse over her shoulder with gusto. Turning to Xander, she beamed a brilliant smile. "When you come home tonight, we're going to have lots of sex to celebrate our escape from this hellhole."  
  
Anya gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then made an abrupt about-face and began walking hurriedly toward the front door, her tennis shoes thudding dully on the lanoleum.   
  
With a short groan, Willow slid down low in her seat until her rump touched the corner of the hard wood base. Life just wasn't fair. Anya got to leave, while those who showed a sort of torturous patience for the whole pointless affair were made to stay because of their very grace of character.   
  
As Willow watched her pass the bookcase, a shudder ran through her. Anya was, in her impatience, her only hope, her possible saving grace. Willow had hoped that she would spark about a bit of lively conversation or, at best, an early end to the meeting. But now her 'get out of jail free' card was about to, literally, walk out the door. When the bell jingled, it would toll the death of her afternoon. Pity, too. She still had so much research to do, and then her work in the lab . . . the wee hours of the morning were rapidly becoming her new peak activity time.   
  
Shutting her eyelids against the increasingly harsh flourescents, Willow hoped for a disruption, any disruption, short of the world ending kind. It was usually inevitable, anyway. Something always died or rose up from the grave or tried to eat her alive. Just to spice things up, to kill the mundanity. But wouldn't it be her luck? The one time that Willow would really want a little pizzazz, the demons wouldn't come a' courting and the vampires would decide raid their local blood bank instead of their local redhead's neck. So she closed her eyes, crossed her fingers, and wished for a distraction.   
  
As her eyes shot open at Anya's shout of "Hey!", and the ensuing echo that seemed almost chaotic within the drafty shop, she realized that it had been granted.


	7. Chapter Seven

A/N: This one's short, a teaser leading up to the really juicy stuff. I wish y'all didn't find the last bit so dull, but really, TRUST ME when I say that it was very much NECESSARY to the rest of the (much more interesting) story! Chapter Eight is coming soon, to a theater near you, so stay tuned.  
  
Chapter Seven

It hadn't started out as a good day for Willow on many levels. One of the main reasons would have to be that sheer and utter boredom was, in fact, occupying most of it. And boredom wasn't usually considered to be the breakfast of champions.   
  
But, had you asked her in the days that followed, the weeks that followed, if she could go back in time (sans the universe imploding, of course) and have that boredom back, even for just a little while . . . she would have laughed. If you had to ask, then you clearly didn't know about the chaos that had ensued.   
  
At the time, though, she was oblivious, and sat and waited for it to arrive; and arrive it did. Later, she would admit to herself that she wasn't ready, not for any of it. She would never be ready.   
  
But it would still come for her.   
  
And she was helpless to stop it.


End file.
